It is difficult to offer a definition or even description of liberalism without referring to some kind of individualism. Liberalism assumes an inherent moral value in each person and defends their right to make their own decisions for their own lives. This has frequently put it into tension with nationalism,
From 1937 to 1960, one third of the population of mothers on the island of Puerto Rico were sterilized through manipulation and misinformation, while others became part of the first clinical trials for the first birth control pill after being misled to believe that the drug was already proven safe.
John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty stands as one of the pillars of modern liberal thought. It is embraced by libertarians and classical liberals for its elaboration of the “harm principle,” a seemingly significant constraint on government action. But there is also much in there for the progressive liberal. Often
In 2015, the film A Place Where the Dream Begins (translated) was released in China to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s (XUAR) official designation as an “autonomous region” in 1955, rather than a province. Showcasing the majestic beauty of the mountains and deserts of
This March, with more than 4,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in France, the French Prime Minister announced a full, nation-wide lockdown. Shops were shuttered, parks were closed, and locals were confined to their homes except for essential shopping and one hour of exercise per day. And of course, the
A specter is haunting the West—the specter of Social Justice. All the powers of old civil society have entered into a wicked alliance to convoke this specter: colleges and universities, broadcasters and newspapers, preachers and politicians. It is high time that the West should openly, in the face of
Liberal centrists are fond of horseshoe theory—the idea that the political spectrum is curved, so that if you go far enough left, or far enough right, you end up in the same place of totalitarianism, intolerance, and violence. Horseshoe theory is misleading though. Fascists make efforts to recruit across
The good news is that some countries are winning the war with COVID-19; fruit from the vast trial and error occurring around the globe, as numerous nations wrestle with the same problems with varying degrees of severity. The bad news is that, at the moment, nationalist and provincial reactions to
“Probably the only thing that genuinely was cancelled in the last 20 years was … The Dixie Chicks,” the longtime progressive blogger Atrios tweeted on June 20. As his use of “genuinely” suggests, Atrios, like many left-wing commentators, is dismissive of the recent flare-up of complaints about “cancel culture,” and when,
At the close of the 20th century, Alexander Keyssar found himself writing what would become the preeminent book on the history of enfranchisement in America. This had not been his original plan. He had spent years, in fact, working on a very different plan—“a highly quantitative study of working-class
The ways in which disabled people have suffered from the stigma surrounding disability vary “from the freak shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the unwilling institutionalization and sterilizations of disabled people.” Disabled activists like Michael Winter recalls the discrimination he’s experienced like “being forced to
Over the last few weeks, issues ostensibly about freedom of speech once again made headlines. Unfortunately, these debates seem plagued by conceptual brittleness. Classically, “freedom of speech” refers to freedom from state-enforced censorship, and despite what the current state of the “free speech” debate might lead one to think, the